| |||||
Decades: | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
See also: | Other events of 2018 History of Hong Kong • Timeline • Years |
Events in the year 2018 in Hong Kong.
The Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is a major public transport network serving Hong Kong. Operated by the MTR Corporation Limited (MTRCL), it consists of heavy rail, light rail, and feeder bus service centred on a 10-line rapid transit network serving the urbanised areas of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories. The system included 245.3 km (152.4 mi) of rail as of December 2022 with 179 stations, including 98 heavy rail stations, 68 light rail stops and five high-speed rail terminus.
The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) is a pro-Beijing conservative political party in Hong Kong. Chaired by Gary Chan and holding 13 Legislative Council seats, it is currently the largest party in the legislature and in terms of membership, far ahead of other parties. It has been a key supporting force to the SAR administration and the central government's policies on Hong Kong.
Tanya Chan is a Hong Kong politician who served as a Legislative Councillor representing Hong Kong Island from 2008 to 2012, and again from 2016 to 2020. She is a founding member of the Civic Party. Chan is sometimes known as the "Zhou Xun of the Civic Party". On 29 September 2020, Chan announced that she would quit politics.
Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is a Hong Kong retired politician who served as the 4th Chief Executive of Hong Kong from 2017 to 2022, after serving as Chief Secretary for Administration for five years.
Starry Lee Wai-king, SBS, JP is a Hong Kong politician and former chairperson of the largest pro-establishment Beijing-loyalist party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB). She is a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC), Legislative Councillor for the Kowloon Central geographical constituency, and a Kowloon City District Councillor. From 2012 to 2016, she was a member of the Executive Council.
West Kowloon station, also known as Hong Kong West Kowloon, is the southern terminus of and the only station on the Hong Kong section of the Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL). The station connects to China's high-speed rail (HSR) network across the border through dedicated tunnels and includes a Mainland Port Area where the laws of (Mainland) China are enforced. It was constructed by the MTR Corporation Limited as the project manager commissioned by the Hong Kong Government, through subcontractors.
The 2016 Hong Kong Legislative Council election was held on 4 September 2016 for the 6th Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo). A total of 70 members, 35 from geographical constituencies (GCs) and 35 from functional constituencies (FCs), were returned. The election came after the rejection of the 2016/2017 constitutional reform proposals which suggested the electoral method for the 2016 Legislative Council remains unchanged.
Holden Chow Ho-ding is a Hong Kong solicitor and politician. He is vice-chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), the largest pro-Beijing party in Hong Kong, and a former chairman of Young DAB, its youth wing. He was elected to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong in 2016, through the District Council (Second) "super seat". He was re-elected in 2021 through the New Territories North West geographical constituency.
The University of Hong Kong pro-vice-chancellor selection controversy surrounded alleged political interference behind the University of Hong Kong governing council's rejection of Johannes Chan's recommended appointment to the post of pro-vice-chancellor in charge of staffing and resources. Chan, dean of the Faculty of Law from 2002 until 2014, was unanimously recommended for the post by a selection committee headed by university president Peter Mathieson. The governing council's decision, the first time that a candidate selected by the committee was rejected, was widely viewed as political retaliation for Chan's involvement with pro-democratic figures including his former subordinate Benny Tai. A majority of HKU Council members are not students or staff of the university, and many are directly appointed by the chief executive of Hong Kong. The decision received international condemnation, and was viewed as part of a Beijing-backed curtailing of academic freedoms that would damage Hong Kong's academic reputation.
Localist groups, or localist and self-determination groups, are the various groups with localist ideologies in Hong Kong. It emerged from post-80s social movements in the late 2000s which centred on the preservation of the city's autonomy and local lifestyles and opposed the perceived growing encroachment of the Beijing government on the city's management of its own political, economic, and social affairs.
Ted Hui Chi-fung is a Hong Kong politician. He formerly represented the Chung Wan constituency in the Central and Western District Council, and formerly he was the Legislative Councillor for the Hong Kong Island constituency. Fearing prosecution by the Government of Hong Kong, he announced his self-exile in Denmark and withdrawal from the Democratic Party in December 2020.
The Sixth Legislative Council of Hong Kong was the sixth meeting of the legislative branch of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. Running from 1 October 2016 to 31 December 2021, it was the longest legislative session in Hong Kong history, lasted for five years and three months. The term of the session was originally from 1 October 2016 to 30 September 2020, but was extended by the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) due to the postponement of the 2020 Legislative Council election.
Sixtus "Baggio" Leung Chung-hang is a Hong Kong activist and politician. He is the convenor of Youngspiration, a localist political group in Hong Kong that leans towards Hong Kong independence, and is also leader and spokesperson of the pro-independence Hong Kong National Front. He was elected to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong as a member for New Territories East in the 2016 Hong Kong Legislative Council election. Triggered by his actions to make an independence political statement during the oath-taking ceremony, he faced a legal challenge from the government and was later stripped of his office by the court on 15 November 2016.
Cheng Chung-tai is a Hong Kong academic, social activist, and politician. After winning a seat in the New Territories West constituency in the 2016 legislative election, he took over from Wong Yeung-tat as chairman of Civic Passion until the dissolution in 2021.
The 2018 Kowloon West by-election was held on 25 November 2018 after the incumbent pro-democracy Legislative Councillor Lau Siu-lai of Kowloon West was disqualified from the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) after the oath-taking controversy resulted in the disqualifications of the six pro-democracy and localist legislators. It followed the by-election of four other vacated seats on 11 March 2018. Chan Hoi-yan, a nonpartisan backed by the pro-Beijing camp won over veteran democrat Lee Cheuk-yan of the Labour Party, a backup candidate for the pro-democracy camp after Lau's candidacy was disqualified.
Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah is a Hong Kong Senior Counsel, arbitrator and politician. She served as Secretary for Justice of Hong Kong from 2018 to 2022. She was also the chairperson of the Financial Dispute Resolution Centre, the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) and vice-president of the International Council of Commercial Arbitration (ICCA).
The 2018 Hong Kong Legislative Council by-election was held on 11 March 2018 for four of the six vacancies in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) - the Hong Kong Island, Kowloon West and New Territories East geographical constituencies and the Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape functional constituency - resulting from the disqualification of six pro-democrat and localist camp Legislative Council members over the 2016 oath-taking controversy. The by-election for the two other seats was not held due to pending legal appeals by the two disqualified legislators.
In October 2019, the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests saw a further escalation of violence. It became evident that the protests were unlikely to end soon, and that they posed the biggest popular challenge to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping since his ascension to CCP general secretary in 2012. To bring the situation under control, Chief Executive Carrie Lam invoked colonial-era powers to impose an anti-mask law, aimed at preventing protesters from hiding their identity. Observers considered the law, which came into force on 4 October, as a precedent for possible wider use of emergency powers at the expense of citizens' freedoms and in addition democratic rights, as they even saw the possibility of the upcoming District Council elections being cancelled based on the emergency law. The mask ban did, however, not achieve the desired effect, but rather proved a further focal point of protests. In November, the High Court ruled the mask ban to be unconstitutional, although in April 2020, an Appeal Court ruled that it was constitutional in the case of unlawful assemblies.
The month of November 2019 in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests started with protesting in malls and police getting into homes and malls to arrest protesters. The death of Chow Tsz-lok in Sheung Tak, Tseung Kwan O had led to more protests. In mid November, there were city-wide strikes which lasted for more than a week. Hong Kong Police officers fired tear gas in Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), and nearby areas. In late November, the District Council elections were held. The pro-democracy camp in conjunction with the localist groups got more than 80 per cent of the seats and gained control of 17 out of 18 District Councils.
On 11 November 2020, 15 Hong Kong pro-democracy members of the Legislative Council announced their resignations in protest against the decision of the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) which bars Legislative Council members from supporting Hong Kong independence, refusing to recognise Beijing's sovereignty over Hong Kong, seeking help from "foreign countries or foreign forces to interfere in the affairs of the region" or committing "other acts that endanger national security" that resulted in the disqualification of pro-democracy legislators Alvin Yeung, Dennis Kwok, Kwok Ka-ki and Kenneth Leung. In July 2020, the four had been barred from running in the subsequently postponed Legislative Council election originally scheduled for September 2020. The resignation en masse left the Legislative Council membership dwindled to 43 out of the total number of 70 seats, with virtually no opposition for the first time since the 1997 handover.